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Alternative A-Z of Yorkshire: Fairies, flat caps and fish and chips
Our weekly series, the Alternative A-Z of Yorkshire, celebrating everything that is good about God's own country, this week arrives at the letter F. You are invited to submit your suggestions for the online version
Fairies at Cottingley
Spiritualism was all the rage after so much death in the trenches in the First World War, and people longed to believe the story that had been put about in 1917 by two young Yorkshire girls. Elsie Wright, aged 15, and her ten year-old cousin, Frances Griffiths, said they had seen fairies at Cottingley near Bingley and photographed them. Under the headline "Fairies in Yorkshire", the following report appeared in the Yorkshire Post from our correspondent on December 6, 1920. Despite scepticism by our writer, it attracted worldwide attention and ran and ran, perhaps because people thought that the inventor of Sherlock Holmes was not a man to have the wool pulled over his eyes.
"In the Christmas number of the Strand Magazine, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes what he regards as an epoch-making event, and asks his readers to believe in the existence of fairies in Yorkshire.
"In support of his case he reproduces photographs from negatives, in which expert photographers have expressed themselves unable to detect any evidence of faking. One of the photographs shows a girl, seated on the grass, in a woodland glade, with a gnome apparently dancing before her. The other print shows a girl leaning on the bank of a stream, with a number of fairies pirouetting before her, one of which is seen to be playing on a pipe, and dancing with abandon like the rest.
"It is a remarkable fact that these photographs were taken about three years ago, and no attempt appears to have been made to give publicity to them by the father of the girls, notwithstanding the fact that he is evidently well versed in photographic processes, and must have realised, at the time he developed the negatives, that 'an epoch-making event' had happened before his eyes. It is passing strange! Most photographers would have shouted it from the housetops. The father is said to have placed plates in a 1/4-plate camera, and the girls sallied forth into the fields with the intention of trying to photograph the fairies, which they are said to have frequently seen. On returning home they were in high glee to find that they had succeeded.
"It is clear that the case rests entirely on the photographic evidence, and, as a photographer of thirty years' standing, I have no hesitation in asserting that it is weak. Anyone who knows all the ins and outs of photography realises to the full what a facile medium it is for deception, wilful or otherwise. There are few experts in the craft who would be prepared to swear to the genuineness of any photograph unless they had seen every operation from start to finish. They would want to see the box of plates, unopened, fresh from the makers, the plates put in the camera, which had been previously examined; they would want to see the exposure made, the plates extracted, developed, fixed, washed, dried, and printed from. In the case before us the test fails at the outset. Who can prove that the plates had not been tampered with prior to insertion in the camera? There are scores of photographers in this country who could produce negatives showing 'fairies', in a variety of attitudes, amid natural surroundings, dancing in the woodlands, etc, quite as convincing as the examples shown, and without revealing any evidence of faking.
"Is it not strange, if Sir A Conan Doyle's arguments are sound, that on the millions of negatives exposed annually, no fairies have hitherto been observed? The sensitive film is constant. It will always record what it sees through the eye of the lens. If it can see fairies today, it will assuredly see them tomorrow. I know it is argued that the girls in the case in question had some occult power to make the fairies visible, but is it not strange that the sitter had to tell the girl with the camera when to expose, leading to the supposition that the fairies were invisible to the latter, although both are reputed to possess the 'seeing eye'?
"Readers who frequent picture shows may recall several films that have appeared lately in which 'fairies' have been seen dancing, with their gossamer-like wings glistening in the semblance of moonshine. They make entrancing pictures, and eventually disappear into thin air. Given a section of one of these positive films, I could enable Sir A Conan Doyle to produce these 'fairy' revellers by means of his own camera, amid the woodlands of Surrey, and he would rub his eyes and wonder where they came from. Indeed, I can conceive of a humorous packer of plates, with the intention of indulging in a joke, printing a few "fairy" subjects on negative plates and leaving them to be developed by the purchaser after he has made his own exposure on woodland or other scene. I do not say it is done - the makers would probably see to that, but it is possible. Hence, I maintain, that the evidence produced by Sir A Conan Doyle, and his collaborator is insufficient to warrant them in asking the shrewd Yorkshire Tyke, at any rate, to believe in the existence of fairies in his county of broad acres, or anywhere else, for that matter."
It was March 19, 1983, before the Yorkshire Post ran another report in which Mrs Elsie Hill, formerly Miss Elsie Wright, confessed her 1917 tale was a fairy story. Some people are still unwilling to be convinced it was a hoax, much to the amusement of the Warin family at March Cote Farm at Cottingley. A steady stream of visitors make their way to the farm, now a green oasis on the edge of the huge Woodside housing estate. This is pretty good news, since the Warins started catering for holidaymakers in 1984 and it has proved a lifeline during farming recession and poor dairy prices.
Michael Hickling
Fell running
Fell running is a northern sport done by northern lads (and now lasses), more often than not, purely for masochistic enjoyment. No-one knows quite how and where it all began, but it seems to have always been popular in the Lakes, Yorkshire and Lancashire, with the Scots preferring to call their versions hill racing. In Victorian times, races were shortish, up-and-downers at village fairs, sports days and agricultural meets - which meant that spectators got a good view of everything. The winner might earn a few bob (perhaps the equivalent of a day's wage) and betting on the outcome was popular, especially among the gentry. Most of the athletes were working-class lads who ran for the fun, sometimes wearing nothing but a pair of hob-nailed boots. A nippy northern wind might explain why the naked racers were so quick. Nowadays, lycra and modern footwear have made things easier (and warmer) but the sport is still run for fun. The short up-and-down "classics", like Burnsall, continue to attract big fields and big crowds, but many fell runners now prefer to tackle greater challenges - and distances - where stamina and endurance go hand in hand with an ability to use map and compass.
David Overend
Fish and chips
Battered fish was probably a Jewish dish, originally brought in to London by immigrants from middle-Europe. We took to it at first bite and the original fast food survives despite the equally unhealthy in-roads made by chop suey and chicken curry, burgers and chicken thighs. Fish and chips is still the food you are most likely to see being eaten on the street, although people munching it on the hoof can appear crude and often create litter. If a "chippy" closes, the locality feels robbed. When this happened in our village, the butcher obligingly split his shop to make room for fish and chips. Once it was a cheap meal when North Sea fishing delivered apparently inexhaustible creels of white fish to market, now cod and haddock are expensive. A "fish supper" served in yesterday's papers, lined with a clean sheet of paper resilient to the heat and fats of the meal, has given way to a moulded tray. Beef dripping has mostly been succeeded by vegetable oil. Mushy peas (soaked and stewed dried peas) are still the side dish of choice, although maybe not with a curry-flavoured gravy. Choosing the country's best fish and chips shop is impossible. The most famous is easy. Harry Ramsden opened his first cafe in Bradford shortly after the 1914-18 war. In 1928 he opened a lock-up wooden shed not far away at Guiseley. His cooking methods were scientific: so many minutes in the fat, the use of stainless steel vats and buckets, and other quality controls that were rare. His shed grew to a restaurant, still with a take-away section and was famous for decades before becoming a world-wide franchise. In Whitby, the Magpie is renowned - and made national headlines because its queues annoy neighbouring businesses and the council. In Leeds, there is the celebrated Bryan's and the quaint restaurant founded by the Brett brothers not far from Headingley cricket ground and immortalised by one of its most passionate patrons, the late John Arlott.
Frederic Manby
Figures in a landscape: Henry Moore
The undulating outlines of Henry Moore's monumental figures are best seen against a Yorkshire backdrop where he was born. Moore's work was what most people had in mind when terms like "modernism" and "abstract" were used - often jeeringly - as shorthand for pretentious. He was actually the most down-to-earth and practical of men, the seventh of Raymond Spencer Moore's eight children in Castleford. His father's job was mining engineer, later under-manager of the Wheldale colliery. He regarded education as the means of keeping his children out of the pit, and he feared that being a sculptor was too close to manual work. But his son, after soldiering in the war, stuck to his plan and became the first student of sculpture at Leeds School of Art, where they even built him his own studio. The Leeds connection remains today with the Henry Moore Institute in the city. It's funded by the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green, in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire where Moore and his wife Irina had moved in 1940. They lived fairly frugally, the exceptional wealth the artist accumulated being used to endow the foundation and help broaden the minds of those - if there are any left - who still sneer at modernism.
MH
Flat caps (and whippets and ferrets)
Said to be typical of Yorkshire but no longer celebrated as such, even by those who strive to maintain the best traditions of the county (see below). By rights, there ought to be a steady demand for the flat cap which is still de rigueur for those who hang over the rail at livestock auction marts. But, of course, none of that headgear on show has been purchased in the last 25 years. The Yorkshire desire to stay ahead of the pack took a terrible knock six years ago with the closure of the JW Myers factory - the world's biggest cap maker - at Holbeck in Leeds. Its heyday was in the 1920s but after 111 years, production was switched to the Chinese city of Panyu. Kangol, the parent company of JW Myers, seems more interested in turning the heads of DJs and rappers who look daft putting their caps on back-to-front. Kangol hope it's only a matter of time before stolid Yorkshire farmers attending agricultural shows follow this trend set by Grandmaster Flash and such-like and finally invest in new headgear. As the flat cap falls, the baseball cap rises, but that's a fashion icon that tells a different tale. Asda has just delivered some good news with sales figures showing flat caps up more than 80 per cent. Are they the correct dun colour with greasy brim? No, almost all the buyers are in the south-east where the most popular model is a country-style burgundy and brown number.
MH
Flag waving, Yorkshire day
For almost 30 years, one of Yorkshire's great summer spectacles was the sight of Colin Holt marching resolutely around York's city walls with the media in tow. The tradition continues, but Holt died a year ago, aged 61. As founder and chairman of the Yorkshire Ridings Society, his message was simple and unchanging: that the sidelining of Yorkshire's ancient North, West and East Ridings, under local government re-organisation in 1974, was a crime and an insult.
The society, founded in the wake of it campaigned "to protect the Yorkshire identity", make people more aware of the county's heritage and, more quixotically perhaps, restore the Ridings to their former importance. All of this was admirable but not necessarily attention-grabbing. Colin Holt's special talent was to grab attention. His first coup was to make his job as the society's publicity officer more challenging by putting himself out of reach by telephone at the cottage he shared with his wife Hilary at Fenwick, a small village north of Doncaster. The Holts refused to pay bills addressed to "Fenwick, South Yorkshire" rather than "Fenwick, West Riding". Eventually, after many official letters, British Telecom cut them off and the phone sat silent on their sideboard, gathering dust for several years.
His second coup was to devise Yorkshire Day, a celebration of all things Yorkshire, with the possible exception of whippets and ferrets. Every August 1, with white roses in their buttonholes, society members make a clockwise circuit of York's city walls. Pausing at the four "bars" or gates, they read out the Yorkshire Declaration of Integrity to an audience of radio and television reporters and slightly puzzled foreign tourists. The declaration, a specially-written statement of faith in the Yorkshireness of Yorkshire, is recited in four versions - Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse and modern English. Interest in Yorkshire Day has spiralled over the years. August 1 was chosen because it was on this day in 1759 that soldiers from Yorkshire regiments who had fought in the battle of Minden picked white roses as a tribute to fallen comrades.
Grace Hammond
Flying scotsman and Yorkshire railways
Who can beat Yorkshire for railway heritage? We can boast the most glamorous, the oldest and the highest. Beginning with the oldest, the Middleton Railway harnessed horses to carriages in 1758 to carry coal from Middleton colliery along a rail track. As the oldest commercial rail operation in the world, it didn't intend to be left standing by rivals who were eyeing up the possibilities of new-fangled steam machinery and, in 1811, commissioned the first working steam locomotive. This got up sufficient momentum to drive an industry in Leeds for more than 150 years, a period when locos from the Hunslet Engine Company were exported all over the world. The Middleton line was going nowhere in the late 1950s, but it was restored in the 1960s by enthusiasts and reopened with volunteers operating passenger and freight services - another first. Recently they got hold of 737,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and have just opened a resource centre where the historic locos, including a newly-acquired Hunslet-built Brookes No 1, are on show. At the opening was Sir William McAlpine, former owner of the most glamorous engine in the country, probably the world. Originally numbered engine 1472 (soon altered to the celebrated 4472) the Flying Scotsman cost 7,944 when it steamed out of LNER's Doncaster works on February 7, 1923. LNER's chief mechanical engineer Nigel Gresley finessed the design so that it could do London to Edinburgh, 392 miles, non-stop on one tender of coal. In 1934 it achieved the first authenticated 100mph by a steam loco. LNER became the definitive railway brand - for a child the murmured repetition of the initials sounded like the rhythmic movement of a train over the sleepers.
A couple of years ago, engine 4472 was to be sold abroad until campaigners backed by Sir Richard Branson and the Yorkshire Post stepped in and acquired it for the National Railway Museum. It is currently laid up, undergoing a 700,000 overhaul to resolve long-standing mechanical problems which resulted in passengers aboard summer steam-drawn excursions from York to Scarborough being disappointed. They might have preferred a steam trip on Britain's highest railway, which also boasts further superlatives. The Settle-Carlisle was the last great mainline railway line to be constructed in Britain, the last to be built almost entirely by pick-and-shovel and, at Dent, it has the highest station in England. This recently opened as a holiday home with a kitchen which was once the ladies waiting room.
At Ribblehead station is a small visitor centre which tells the story of the 7,000 men who laboured for seven years to get this section and the famous Ribblehead viaduct open.
In 1869, St Leonard's church at Chapel-le-Dale had about 200 in its congregation. By 1871 nearly 1,000 navvies had been added to its flock as they laboured across some of the most inhospitable territory in the country. Not that church-going was their strong-point. Today a few mounds are all that is left of their shanty towns. Although transience defined these forgotten workmen of the Victorian age, their struggles in a fierce landscape have a permanent memorial in the viaduct.
MH
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Weather for Yorkshire
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 11 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North east
